The wind has seriously picked up. Thankfully we still have power (fingers crossed).

Lights flickering a bit here in Queens, New York.
No loss of power yet.
I forgot to invest in some candles.

Best of luck Ivan, same situation in Philly . I have extra candles , sorry I cannot send them to you.

Aperture64, that's scary, hope you and yours get through this OK.


Randy

Good luck all...

Yeah, wishing you all well. Stay as safe as is possible .

My best friend went to the Northern Neck (from here, a bit east of Pittsburgh) as well this weekend to visit his girlfriend. The trip was planned well before news of the storm, and while he's not thrilled with being there, he'd rather be there with her, than have her there alone.

Up here near Pittsburgh, we're getting sideswiped now by the leading edge, and it'll intensify to the worst it'll be overnight. Right now it's raining pretty hard and we're getting the occasional 30-40mph gust, but it's not even what I'd call a bad storm...yet. We're expecting power outages and maybe some flooding/flooded basements in low lying areas, and while the media is making dire predictions, most of the people I know are expecting the storm to pass without much incident in this area.

Good luck out there everyone.

I left Philadelphia, staying in south Jersey for a few days.
The wind has picked up, and the lights are flickering.
My grab and go bag is packed with survival gear, food, clothes and cameras, you know the essentials.

Wind is still pretty spotty here in northern VT, supposed to be at it's worst here around 2am, but trees are down and my office windows keep getting slammed every now and again. A car just drove by and the road sounds wet, but I'm not hearing much rain. Just heard that Con Ed shut off power to Lower Manhattan. Yikes. My old NY neighborhood is in the orange and yellow zones for evacuation - can't imagine for the life of me water getting that high. Fingers crossed here for all in the middle of the path.

Last Saturday in central Mississippi, I saw a convoy of 40-50 utility repair trucks heading north. They should be ready to help restore power as soon as the storm subsides. I guess this is a bit of a Katrina payback.

I have been through many hurricanes as a Florida native. Plus I have been photographing the Katrina destruction / reconstruction on the Mississippi Gulf Coast since that storm. I have seen too many 100 year old "hurricane proof" houses that have nothing left but a floor slab. A part of me feels sorry for those who did not heed the warnings to evacuate. But another part of me thinks that Darwin's theory of evolution works in strange ways.

I think I am headed to eastern Cuba in a few weeks to photograph the impact / reconstruction down there. I have seen and photographed the continuing reconstruction from hurricanes Ike and Gustav which hit western Cuba in 2008. Time to do it again.

Just reported on WNYC...

7:11pm Building Facade in Chelsea Collapses, no one Hurt
7:41pm Cars seen Floating on Wall Street
8:01pm First Fatality: 30 year old man killed in Flushing by Tree falling on Home
8:11pm Subway Bridge to The Rockaways is now Under Water

Good luck everyone - thinking of you over here in the UK. I have close colleagues based in Lower Manhattan so Il have fingers crossed for them as well.

That's sad you think your safe in your home and that happens, further north
in Westchester, wind is really kicking up and seeing lots of bright flashes in the sky
may be transformers, Thanks for all the well wishes.

Range

I saw pictures of the building in Chelsea Helen- crazy. Wind must be whipping up those Avenues.

Its Howling Mad...and we only just Begun

Seriously? At a time like this?

Brown Outs..? Are these from shi..ing your pants.?

Cars floating on Wall Street? Maybe this is Mother Nature's way of showing us all what a real "Occupy Wall Street" looks like...

On a serious note, I hear that ConEd just cut power to all of lower Manhattan. I hope YOU are safe, Helen. Thanks for the updates and TAKE CARE!

Helen just saw that building on the news the whole front is gone it's really getting
bad in lower Manhattan lots of flooding as well.

Range

The wind gusts are finally easing off here. I live on the lower slope of a hill that's urban but very leafy. I've never seen the trees move around as much as today, some of the gusts were 70mph I'm told. We just had an hour of torrential rain that recently stopped as abruptly as it began. Very luckily we still have power although it has flickered a couple times, last year with Irene we were without power for days as a tree came down on my street and a transformer exploded. Today was all about the wind though, it was much worse than Irene last year and we are hundreds of miles from the center of this storm. I really feel for those getting the brunt of it...

I have relatives living in the path of Sandy.

I know that the affected area is not prepared for hurricanes, so I'm so grateful that it's not a really powerful storm with 2 times the wind speed.

Good luck and a safe night to all.

Texsport

Hope everyone in NYC is doing well.
All the images and news updates I'm seeing are about flooding in lower Manhattan and an explosion at a con ed power plant.

Follow the official directions please and stay inside till morning. Tomorrow it may be safe to venture outdoors for a look-see. The hidden dangers are out there so be careful please.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob Michaels
A part of me feels sorry for those who did not heed the warnings to evacuate. But another part of me thinks that Darwin's theory of evolution works in strange ways.

Bob: that reference to Darwin's theory of evolution originally came from a friend who lost 200 of his closest friends who did not evacuate the town of Hopedale LA in hurricane Katrina. He was Charlo Inabanet, who always referred to himself as a "coonass". Charlo was the only one who did not evacuate to survive to storm surge. He was a delayed Katrina victim, having lost his oyster boat and everything he owned in addition to all his friends. He died about a year ago. He described himself and all his lost friends as "f***ing stupid coonasses" and made the Darwin reference. I think if someone in his situation can make that reference, I can as well.

unfortunately parked car

How's NYC now? Im Stuck in Osaka.